70 Bitter Silence
by Oblivion's Demon
Summary: The wind rustles through the sand, and it doesn't make a sound.


So, this is prompt 70 in a list of 100 challenges, but if any of you have been to my profile, you know I haven't published nearly that many stories. Anyway, if you wanna read the other prompts I have written, check 'em out. And, as always, a shout out to my wonderful beta reader: gummybear0216! Sorry for the wait!

* * *

Summary: The wind rustles through the sand, and it doesn't make a sound.

* * *

Temari doesn't remember the first time she heard someone speak; she doesn't remember how she learned to speak. Even before the monster was born, there was not much talking in her residence. There was no laughter, and there certainly was no shouting. Heaven forbid anyone raise their voice above a whisper; heaven forbid a smile even flit across the mouths of the occupants.

Even outside the silent house, there was no noise. The sand burned her feet and her skin as she searched frantically for somebody, anybody. No, no one answered her, because she could not call out. Her desert was just like her home, heavy and silent.

In the schools no one would talk to her, the Kazekage's daughter. When she walked in the room, they all fell silent, even the stupid teacher. When she walked through the streets with her little brother, villagers would snap their mouths shut and _stare_. The eyes were everywhere, the cold, silent eyes. The eyes that never said words. The eyes that never smiled at her, or acknowledged her as anything but a rival.

Of course, they never _told_ her this, (of course, of course, of fucking_ course_) they never said in as many words. But she knew, she knew in the way people looked at her, the way they didn't look at her, the way they bowed to her and the way they ignored her who considered her a threat and who did not. She wasn't stupid. She may have been dumb, but she wasn't stupid.

Her family was not dysfunctional, not by a long shot. They were a perfectly oiled machine, so efficient it no longer needed commands. It had never needed commands; at this point, she was unsure whether the machine had ever needed commands. Mother was where she ought to be, in bed, resting. Father was where he ought to be, at the Hokage building, glaring at the elders. Daughter was where she ought to be, at the Academy, becoming a true kunoichi. Son was where he ought to be, with his wet nurse, drooling.

Perfect, prefect; everything was perfect. Perfect white walls, perfect pin drop silence. In an hour, Mother (what was her name, again?) would get up, like clockwork, and make food. It would be the same every day. In six more hours, Father (did he even have a name?) would come home from work and eat the food. An hour after that, Temari (she wondered if someone had ever bothered to name her) would prepare her homework for the next day. Kankaro (she learned his name by reading it off a piece of paper; it was never told to her) would already be in bed by that time.

Her days are like clockwork, like each of them follows the tick of a silent clock, telling them where to go. Even the clock, though, doesn't make a sound. She used to pretend that her heartbeat was a steady _tick tock_ she imagined a clock should make. She followed the deep bass pounding of her heart, like how she imagined a group of footsteps pounding against the ground should sound like.

Eventually, though, even her heart beat goes away. It's like there is cotton stuffed in her ears; she can't hear a single thing. Not a sound, even from deep inside of her. She has been silenced.

One night, though, she hears a shriek that pierces the silence and shatters her life. A single screech, and the silence she didn't realize she was clinging to flung her out into the darkness. The cotton was ripped out of her ears, and she was suddenly overwhelmed with the weight of sound, pressing her in from all angles. A single scream, and suddenly she can't breathe.

She has a new little brother now, and no mother. It is not a trade she feels particularly bitter about. This new addition is just as silent as the one he replaced. In fact, she would say this one is even more silent. Maybe _too_ silent, from the way the nurses and the maids are reacting. But she doesn't know what too silent means; she doesn't know the difference.

Soon, though, she notices a different kind of silence. The old silence, she realizes now, was an absence of noise. There was only emptiness in her old silence. Here, though, the silence is stifled, like the whole house is about to erupt into screams at any second. It is filled with silent sobs and shrieks lying just under the surface. She can feel them pulling at her skin and tugging at her hair.

The source of this tension is obvious; it is her new little brother. She knew things would be different the second that scream broke the silence her family wore around them like a shield. Now she doesn't know what will happen. More and more, their broken silence is punctuated with skidding footsteps and terrified almost screams. She can hear them just waiting to let loose.

This is a tense silence; a hurtful one. It is teetering just on the edge of outright screaming and crying and bleeding, but it never tips. One glance into those teal eyes, so dead and cold and empty, and her already silenced heart lodged in her throat and strangled any noise she had ever even thought about making.

For years they all stood, caught in the silence that muffled them like a wet cloth. She could feel silence dripping off her skin and permeating the air around her. Like the stifling desert air, the lack of noise pressed down on her like a void. Every day, her knees almost buckled under the sheer weight of Silence. Even the insults and taunts that had been hurled at Gaara (her mother had named him, the first time she had ever used her voice for something important) petered off in the wake of those vacuum-like eyes. Sunagakure, no, the whole desert, was cloaked in a bubble of silence. Everything her father ruled was silent.

It's no surprise then, that when she gets to Konoha for the chunnin exams, her voice is rough and coarse like the desert sand. It is a surprise, however, that she can even speak at all.

The air there was different. She could breathe without the feeling of unsaid said words and smothered sobs scraping down her throat and strangling her from the inside out. Instead, the air is alive with shouts and laughter and things the people of Suna would consider soft. Here, she can stand up straight without Silence pressing her down into a battle-ready crouch.

She can't believe how absolutely _loud_ this village is; one boy wears an orange jumpsuit so noisy she can almost hear it scream. There is a head of pink hair in the crowd that may as well be a billboard to get her attention. Each and every thing in the village fights for her attention in the loudest way possible. The ninja all scream and rant and act completely dishonorable. These people cannot be shinobi; shinobi are silent guardians, killers from the shadows.

And yet, when she is there, she sees screaming ninja battles that put her own fights to shame. These shinobi use their words to beat hammer blows into everything she knows about the world. They fight, not with fists and kunai, but with words. She doesn't understand.

She doesn't understand, but maybe she doesn't have to. All she had to do is listen to the sound of feet skidding in the grass, and shinobi pounding over the rooftops, and she can feel at one with the noise that hides her like a blanket. Here, surrounded by the sound of battle cries and groans of pain, of unprofessionalism at its peak, the Silence cannot find her. She is just another source of noise, folding so perfectly into the melody that should not—cannot—exist.

There is crashing, and screaming, and pounding, and yelling, and sobbing, and laughing, and a hundred other things she thought were fairy tales. For a moment, she is hidden, and liberated, from the Silence. Then, all too soon, it is over. The fighting is done, and it is time for the Silent Suna shinobi to remove the one blip of silence from the otherwise rowdy village.

They retreat, feet pounding through the grass and cracking on the bark of trees. She can still hear the sound of laughing, crying voices in the background. Then she can feel her shoulders slump and hunch defensively. Her feet sink deep into the Suna sand

And she can't

Hear

A

Thing.


End file.
